Pedestrian ponders parking prices

Because I walk to work 99% of the time, I normally have never had cause to pay attention to the cost of parking. So I was puzzled to learn that faculty parking permits cost ~33% more for Fall semester than the equally long Spring semester. Weirder, Summer session I costs more than 100% than the equally long Summer session II.

This makes zero sense to me. A popular theory was that this was because enrollment is higher in Fall then Spring, and Summer I than Summer II. But these are faculty parking rates, not student rates, and faculty don’t park in the same places as students. Even then, there aren’t one third more students in one semester than the other.

One of the things I think  we have to thank the Quakers for is the idea that things have a price. And that the price of an object doesn’t fluctuate depending on your haggling skills or how well off you are. It shouldn’t fluctuate in this way, either.